


Vox(); Machina()

by ashtopop



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Transistor (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Transistor AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 17:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11362050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashtopop/pseuds/ashtopop
Summary: A lady without a voice. A gent without a body. Transistor!AU





	Vox(); Machina()

Highrise is far from the water. He mentioned it often, a nagging thought that hung like a dark cloud despite the hour’s 82% cloudless sky. Highrise is far from the water, _so why were you there_?

She would shrug and dance away from him, “I needed inspiration,” she would say. “Instead, I found you.”

She fished him out of the river, literally—like a paper boat that had escaped small hands upstream. Their play had been interrupted by the body on the water, parents tugging them away to the next activity, eyes scanning the water with unease. Cloudbank didn’t like their bodies public. Her hair was like chocolate and her eyes were like amber; he was trapped in their gaze even then. She saw him, and it disarmed him—dismantled his defenses and left him vulnerable in an instant. She saw him, and she didn't look away. Her eyes didn't flicker to his dataset and widen when she saw a stunning lack of information. He recognized her from the posters.

“I’m Vex,” she said, kneeling next to his head. “Who are you?”

“Nothing. Nobody,” he said, trying to stand. The world spun, tilting on its axis.

“Okay, Nobody,” Vex said, looking up at the approaching bots eager to snap her picture—or was it his? She slung his arm over her shoulder and limped him into a side alley. “I’ll take you home.”

 His mouth opened and shut as if he’d grown gills during his time in the water, but she handed him a helmet and patted the back of her motorcycle. Already he was helpless to resist her sincerity and good humor, her quick words and quicker eyes. She seemed to know it, too, giving him a wink before she snapped her own helmet visor shut.

They sped across town, block after block toward Highrise, his hands awkwardly grasping her waist. On the new speedway they flickered past streetlights, streaky red sunsets and bright blue skies with puffy clouds in moments. And beneath his fingertips, she hummed. He couldn’t quite catch the melody, but the effort of trying kept his mind from the canal—gasping and grabbing for handholds, tumbling in the tide. It didn't stop him from vomiting into the spare motorcycle helmet she'd so generously loaned him, but it was something to hang onto: stars to navigate the seas of cold, relentless white.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t nobody then. But now he is. He is a ghost in the machine. A haunting the Protocol just can’t shake, a statistical anomaly and—worse—evidence their algorithms and designs were fallible. Worst of all, though, he might well prove a liability.

Vex’ahlia is charm personified, but her determination makes her dangerous. Chaotic. Disruptive. She plucks strings of code to a beautiful, unselfconscious symphony, and her creations are  _beautiful_. They alter the perspective through which Cloudbank views itself, and they loved her for it.

_Loved_. He would remember to tell her. He would tell her as often as possible. Not in fresh coffee brought to her table or in improvements to her terminal. Not in letting her choose what to watch (always animal documentaries, even if she’d never owned a _dog_ ), and not in a midnight kiss to her temple in the glow of his terminal screen. In words. They were really more her territory than his, but they had stolen that from her, too.

Ripley wants to rewrite and rewire him, use _him_ to make _them_ stronger. Vex was on their list for a number of reasons, not least of all that she’d never given up on the disappearance of her brother, but he had no doubt he’d been the true target that night. After all, why leave work unfinished? Ripley, with her supervision and organization selections, would never allow it. He wondered if her compatriots even knew.

Cloudbank would understand if he joined his family in the country. The de Rolos had always been close, after all. The Camerata—Delilah, Sylas, Anders and Ripley—would make sure he was forgotten quickly. A scrubbed footnote on a page of spotless, pure white. The de Rolos were easy marks, trusting and comfortable in their position of relative control, administrators and civil engineers all. But Percival is Nobody, now, and he doesn’t fall to them without taking something of theirs. 

Percival does not escape them a second time, but he saves her, and that is worth everything to him. But they took her voice, too, and he can see—when she lets him—how the fire rages behind her eyes. He has no doubt they will burn for what they have done to his—no, _their_ city. 

“Hey Vex. We’re not going to get away with this, are we?"

Percy becomes the Transistor that Processed his family, wielded by a new hand. He doesn't feel bloodstained, he feels  _cruel_. He feels vengeful. He wants to take everything they took from him. Everything they took from her. And more. He hums in her hands, a soundless song of possibility.

She hums back.

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued?


End file.
